The McCone Files

by Marcia Muller

  I said, “Something has got to happen soon.”

  Bert helped himself to another sandwich. “Not necessarily. Got any more of those pickles?”

  “No, we’re out.”

  “Shit. I don’t suppose if this goes on that there’s any possibility of cooking breakfast tomorrow? Sunday’s I always fix bacon.”

  In spite of my having wolfed down some ham, my mouth began to water. “No,” I said wistfully. “Cooking smells, you know. This house is supposed to be vacant for the weekend.”

  “So far no one’s come near it, and nobody seems to be casing it. Maybe you’re wrong about the burglars.”

  “Maybe…No, I don’t think so. Listen: Andie Wyatt went to Hawaii; she came back to a cleaned-out apartment. Janie Roos was in Carmel with a lover; she lost everything fenceable. Kim New was in Vegas, where I’m supposed to be—”

  “But maybe you’re wrong about the way the burglar knows—”

  There was a noise toward the rear of the house, past the current construction zone on the back porch. I held up my hand for Bert to stop talking and blew out the candles.

  I sensed Bert tensing. He reached for his gun at the same time I did mine.

  The noise came louder—the sound of an implement probing the back-porch lock. It was one of those useless toy locks that had been there when I bought the cottage; I’d left the dead bolt unlocked since Friday.

  Rattling sounds. A snap. The squeak of the door as it moved inward.

  I touched Bert’s arm. He moved over into the recess by the pantry, next to the light switch. I slipped up next to the door to the porch. The outer door shut, and footsteps came toward the kitchen, then stopped.

  A thin beam of light showed under the inner door between the kitchen and the porch—the burglar’s flashlight. I smiled, imagining his surprise at the sawhorses and wood scraps and exposed wiring that make up my own personal urban-renewal project.

  The footsteps moved toward the kitchen door again. I took the safety off the .38.

  The door swung toward me. A half-circle of light from the flash illuminated the blue linoleum. It swept back and forth, then up and around the room. The figure holding the flash seemed satisfied that the room was empty; it stepped inside and walked toward the hall.

  Bert snapped on the overhead light.

  I stepped forward, gun extended and said, “All right, Jerry. Hands above your head and turn around—slowly.”

  The flash clattered to the floor. The figure—dressed all in black—did as I said.

  But it wasn’t Jerry.

  It was Morton Stone—the nice, sad man I’d had the dinner date with. He looked as astonished as I felt.

  I thought of the evening I’d spent with him, and my anger rose. All that sincere talk about how lonely he was and how much he missed his dead wife. And now he turned out to be a common crook!

  “You son of a bitch!” I said. “And I was going to fix you up with one of my friends!”

  He didn’t say anything. His eyes were fixed nervously on my gun.

  Another noise on the back porch. Morton opened his mouth, but I silenced him by raising the .38.

  Footsteps clattered across the porch, and a second figure in black came through the door. “Morton, what’s wrong? Why’d you turn the lights on?” a woman’s voice demanded.

  It was Marie, the receptionist from All the Best People. Now I knew how she could afford her expensive clothes.

  “So I was right about how they knew when to burglarize people, but wrong about who was doing it,” I told Hank. We were sitting at the bar in the Remedy Lounge, our favorite Mission Street watering hole.

  “I’m still confused. The Intro Line is part of All the Best People?”

  “It’s owned by Jerry Hale, and the phone equipment is located in the same offices. But as Jerry—Dave Lester, whichever incarnation you prefer—told me later, he doesn’t want the connection publicized because the Intro Line is kind of sleazy, and Best People’s supposed to be high-toned. Anyway, I figured it out because I noticed there were an awful lot of phones ringing at their offices, considering their number isn’t published. Later I confirmed it with the phone company and started using the line myself to set the burglar up.”

  “So this Jerry wasn’t involved at all?”

  “No. He’s the genuine article—a born-again single who decided to put his knowledge to turning a profit.”

  Hank shuddered and took a sip of Scotch.

  “The burglary scheme,” I went on, “was all Marie Stone’s idea. She had access to the addresses of the people who joined the Intro Line club, and she listened in on the phone conversations and scouted out good prospects. Then, when she was sure their homes would be vacant for a period of time, her brother, Morton Stone, pulled the job while she kept watch outside.”

  “How come you had a date with Marie’s brother? Was he looking you over as a burglary prospect?”

  “No. They didn’t use All the Best People for that. It’s Jerry’s pride and joy; he’s too involved with the day-to-day workings and might have realized something was wrong. But the Intro Line is just a profit-making arm of the business to him—he probably uses it to subsidize his dating. He’d virtually turned the operation of it over to Marie. But he did allow Marie to send out mail solicitations for it to Best People clients, as well as mentioning it to the women he ‘screened’, and that’s how the burglary victims heard of it.”

  “But it still seems too great a coincidence that you ended up going out with this Morton.”

  I smiled. “It wasn’t a coincidence at all. Morton also works for Best People, helping Jerry screen the female clients. When I had my date with Jerry, he found me…well, he said I was peculiar.”

  Hank grinned and started to say something, but I glared. “Anyway, he sent Mort out with me to render a second opinion.”

  “Ye Gods, you were almost rejected by a dating service.”

  “What really pisses me off is Morton’s grieving-widower story. I really fell for the whole tasteless thing. Jerry told me Morton gets a lot of women with it—they just can’t resist a man in pain.”

  “But not McCone.” Hank drained his glass and gestured at mine. “You want another?”

  I looked at my watch. “Actually, I’ve got to be going.”

  “How come? It’s early yet.”

  “Well, uh…I have a date.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “I thought you were through with the singles scene. Which one is it tonight—the gun nut?”

  I got off the bar stool and drew myself up in a dignified manner. “It’s someone I met on my own. They always tell you that you meet the most compatible people when you’re just doing what you like to do and not specifically looking.”

  “So where’d you meet this guy?”

  “On a stakeout.”

  Hank waited. His eyes fairly bulged with curiosity.

  I decided not to tantalize him any longer. I said, “It’s Bert Jankowski, Dick Morris’ security guard.”

  THE PLACE THAT TIME FORGOT

  IN SAN FRANCISCO’S Glen Park district there is a small building with the words GREENGLASS 5 & 10¢ STORE painted in faded red letters on its wooden façade. Broadleaf ivy grows in planter boxes below its windows and partially covers their dusty panes. Inside is a counter with jars of candy and bubble gum on top and cigar, cigarettes, and pipe tobacco down below. An old-fashioned jukebox—the kind with colored glass tubes—hulks against the opposite wall. The rest of the room is taken up by counters laden with merchandise that has been purchased at fire sales and manufacturers’ liquidations. In a single shopping spree, it is possible for a customer to buy socks, playing cards, off-brand cosmetics, school supplies, kitchen utensils, sports equipment, toys and light bulbs—all at prices of at least ten years ago.

  It is a place forgotten by time, a fragment of yesterday in the midst of today’s city.

  I have now come to know the curious little store well, but up until one rainy Wednesday last March, I’d d
one no more than glance inside while passing. But that morning Hank Zahn, my boss at All Souls Legal Cooperative, had asked me to pay a call on its owner, Jody Greenglass. Greenglass was a client who had asked if Hank knew an investigator who could trace a missing relative for him. It didn’t sound like a particularly challenging assignment, but my assistant, who usually handles routine work, was out sick. So at ten o’clock, I put on my raincoat and went over there.

  When I pushed upon the door I saw there wasn’t a customer in sight. The interior was gloomy and damp; a fly buzzed fitfully against one of the windows. I was about to call out, thinking the proprietor must be beyond the curtained doorway at the rear, when I realized a man was sitting on a stool behind the counter. That was all he was doing—just sitting, his eyes fixed on the wall above the jukebox.

  He was a big man, elderly, with a belly that bulged out under his yellow shirt and black suspenders. His hair and beard were white and luxuriant, his eyebrows startlingly black by contrast. When I said, “Mr. Greenglass?” he looked at me, and I saw an expression of deep melancholy.

  “Yes?” he asked politely.

  “I’m Sharon McCone, from All Souls Legal Cooperative.”

  “Ah, yes. Mr. Zahn said he would send someone.”

  “I understand you want to locate a missing relative.”

  “My granddaughter.”

  “If you’ll give me the particulars, I can get on it right away.” I looked around for a place to sit, but didn’t see any chair.

  Greenglass stood. “I’ll get you a stool.” He went toward the curtained doorway, moving gingerly, as if his feet hurt him. They were encased in floppy slippers.

  While I waited for him, I looked up at the wall behind the counter and saw it was plastered with faded pieces of slick paper that I first took to be playbills. Upon closer examination I realized they were sheet music, probably of forties and fifties vintage. Their artwork was of that era anyway: formally dressed couples performing intricate dance steps; showgirls in extravagant costumes; men with patent-leather hair singing their hearts out; perfectly coiffed women showing plenty of even, pearly white teeth. Some of the song titles were vaguely familiar to me: “Dreams of You,” “The Heart Never Lies,” “Sweet Mystique,” and others I had never heard of.

  Jody Greenglass came back with a wooden stool and set it on my side of the counter. I thanked him and perched on it, then took a pencil and notebook from my bag. He hoisted himself onto his own stool, sighing heavily.

  “I see you were looking at my songs,” he said.

  “Yes. I haven’t really seen any sheet music since my piano teacher gave up on me when I was about twelve. Some of those are pretty old, aren’t they?”

  “Not nearly as old as I am.” He smiled wryly. “I wrote the first in thirty-nine, the last in fifty-three. Thirty-seven of them in all. A number were hits.”

  “You wrote them?”

  He nodded and pointed to the credit line on the one closest to him: “Words and Music by Jody Greenglass.”

  “Well, for heaven’s sake,” I said. “I’ve never met a songwriter before. Were these recorded too?”

  “Sure. I’ve got them all on the jukebox. Some good singers performed them—Como, Crosby.” His smile faded. “But then, in the fifties, popular music changed. Presley, Holly, those fellows—that’s what did it. I couldn’t change with it. Luckily, I’d always had the store; music was more of a hobby for me. ‘My Little Girl’”—he indicated a sheet with a picture-pretty toddler on it—“was the last song I ever sold. Wrote it for my granddaughter when she was born in fifty-three. It was not a big hit.”

  “This is your granddaughter you want me to locate?”

  “Yes. Stephanie Ann Weiss. If she’s still alive, she’s thirty-seven now.”

  “Let’s talk about her. I take it she’s your daughter’s daughter?”

  “My daughter Ruth’s. I only had the one child.”

  “Is your daughter still living?”

  “I don’t know.” His eyes clouded. “There was a … an estrangement. I lost track of both of them a couple of years after Stephanie was born.”

  “If it’s not too painful, I’d like to hear about that.”

  “It’s painful, but I can talk about it.” He paused, thoughtful. “It’s funny. For a long time it didn’t hurt, because I had my anger and disappointment to shield myself. But those kinds of emotions can’t last without fuel. Now that they’re gone, I hurt as much as if it happened yesterday. That’s what made me decide to try to make amends to my granddaughter.”

  “But not your daughter too?”

  He made a hand motion as if to erase the memory of her. “Our parting was too bitter; there are some things that can’t be atoned for, and frankly, I’m afraid to try. But Stephanie—if her mother hasn’t completely turned her against me, there might be a chance for us.”

  “Tell me about this parting.”

  In a halting manner that conveyed exactly how deep his pain went, he related his story.

  Jody Greenglass had been widowed when his daughter was only ten and raised the girl alone. Shortly after Ruth graduated from high school, she married the boy next door. The Weiss family had lived in the house next to Greenglass’s Glen Park cottage for close to twenty years, and their son, Eddie and Ruth were such fast childhood friends that a gate was installed in the fence between their adjoining backyards. Jody, in fact, thought of Eddie as his own son.

  After their wedding the couple moved north to the small town of Petaluma, where Eddie had found a good job in the accounting department of one of the big egg hatcheries. In 1953, Stephanie Ann was born. Greenglass didn’t know exactly when or why they began having marital problems, perhaps they hadn’t been ready for parenthood, or perhaps the move from the city to the country didn’t suit them. But by 1955, Ruth had divorced Eddie and had taken up with a Mexican national named Victor Rios.

  “So you tried to stop her.”

  He nodded wearily. “I tried. But Ruth wasn’t listening to me anymore. She’d always been such a good girl. Maybe that was the problem—she’d been too good and it was her time to rebel. We quarreled bitterly, more than once. Finally I told her that if she kept on living with Rios, she and her child would be dead to me. She said that was just fine with her. I never saw or heard from her again.”

  “Never made any effort to contact her?”

  “Not until a couple of weeks ago. I nursed my anger and bitterness, nursed them well. But then in the fall I had some health problems—my heart—and realized I’d be leaving this world without once seeing my grown granddaughter. So when I was back on my feet again, I went up to Petaluma, checked the phone book, asked around their old neighborhood. Nobody remembered them. That was when I decided I needed a detective.”

  I was silent, thinking of the thirty-some years that had elapsed. Locating Stephanie Ann Weiss—or whatever name she might now be using—after all that time would be difficult. Difficult, but not impossible, given she was still alive. And certainly more challenging than the job I’d initially envisioned.

  Greenglass seemed to interpret my silence as pessimism. He said, “I know it’s been a very long time, but isn’t there something you can do for me? I’m seventy-eight years old; I want to make amends before I die.”

  I felt the prickle of excitement that I often experience when faced with an out-of-the-ordinary problem. I said, “I’ll try to help you. As I said before, I can get on it right away.”

  I gathered more information from him—exact spelling of names, dates—then asked for the last address he had for Ruth in Petaluma. He had to go in the back of the store where, he explained, he now lived, to look it up. While he did so, I wandered over to the jukebox and studied the titles of the 78s. There was a basket of metal slugs on top of the machine, and on a whim I fed it one and punched out selection E-3, “My Little Girl.” The somewhat treacly lyrics boomed forth in a smarmy baritone; I could understand why the song hadn’t gone over in the days when America was gearin
g up to feverishly embrace the likes of Elvis Presley. Still, I had to admit the melody was pleasing—downright catchy, in fact. By the time Greenglass returned with the address, I was humming along.

  Back in my office at All Souls, I set a skip trace in motion, starting with an inquiry to my friend Tracy at the Department of Motor Vehicles regarding Ruth Greenglass, Ruth Weiss, Ruth Rios, Stephanie Ann Rios, or any variant thereof. A check with directory assistance revealed that neither woman currently had a phone in Petaluma or the surrounding communities. The Petaluma Library had nothing on them in their reverse street directory. Since I didn’t know either woman’s occupation, professional affiliations, doctor, or dentist, those avenues were closed to me. Petaluma High School would not divulge information about graduates, but the woman in records with whom I spoke assured me that no one named Stephanie Rios had attended during the mid- to late-sixties. The county’s voter registration had a similar lack of information. The next line of inquiry to pursue while waiting for a reply from the DMV was vital statistics—primarily marriage licenses and death certificates—but for those I would need to go to the Sonoma County Courthouse in Santa Rosa. I checked my watch, saw it was only a little after one, and decided to drive there.

  Santa Rosa, some fifty miles north of San Francisco, is a former country town that has risen to the challenge of migrations from the crowded communities of the Bay Area and become a full-fledged city with a population nearing a hundred thousand. Testimony to this is the new County Administration Center on its outskirts, where I found the Recorder’s Office housed in a building on the aptly named Fiscal Drive.

  My hour-and-a-half journey up there proved well worth the time: the clerk I dealt with was extremely helpful, the records easily accessed. Within half an hour, for a nominal fee, I was in possession of a copy of Ruth Greenglass Weiss’s death certificate, She had died of cancer at Petaluma General Hospital in June of 1974; her next of kin was shown as Stephanie Ann Weiss, at an address on Bassett Street in Petaluma. It was a different address from the last one Greenglass had had for them.